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Human Rights in Iran Worsen, U.N. Investigator Says

UNITED NATIONS — Executions have surged in Iran and oppressive conditions for women have worsened, a United Nations investigator said on Monday, drawing attention to rights abuses just as Iran’s president is pushing for a diplomatic breakthrough with the West.

The investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, a former diplomat from the Maldives and now special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, made the comments on the eve of presenting his latest findings to members of the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr. Shaheed said he had been shocked by the execution on Saturday of Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, who was convicted of killing a man she had accused of raping her. The death sentence had prompted international outcry and efforts by the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, to rescind it. Under the Iranian Constitution, the president has no power over the judiciary.

In a briefing with reporters Monday morning, Mr. Shaheed suggested that Mr. Rouhani had only “limited authority” to make the broad changes that he promised when elected in June 2013.

Among those put to death were at least eight juvenile offenders and four minority Arabs whom Mr. Shaheed described as “cultural rights activists.”

The death penalty can be applied in Iran for adultery, recidivist alcohol use, drug possession and trafficking, as well as crimes in which a person “points a weapon at members of the public to kill, frighten and coerce them,” the report said. Mr. Shaheed said minorities are sometimes charged for “exercising their rights to peaceful expression and association.”

Iran’s leaders have sought to discredit Mr. Shaheed, describing him as a lackey of the country’s Western adversaries. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, quoted by the Fars News Agency on Monday, said Mr. Shaheed was biased against Iran and a “staunch supporter of terrorism.” The Iranian Mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment on the report.

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Mr. Shaheed’s report contains the government’s rebuttal to his findings, including its contention that Iran does not prosecute anyone on the basis of ethnicity. He gave credit to the government for a new penal code that removes references to witchcraft, apostasy and heresy.

The report comes at an increasingly delicate time for Iran’s international image. A Nov. 24 deadline is looming in its negotiations with the United States and other powerful countries on limiting its nuclear program, in exchange for a lifting of onerous economic sanctions.

Mr. Shaheed has vexed Iran’s leaders since his appointment in 2011. He has said he has not been allowed into the country but has interviewed 400 Iranians, about a third of them living in Iran, including some prisoners who spoke to him on smuggled cellphones. The rest are in exile.

Shortly after his appointment, Mr. Shaheed met here with Iranian diplomats, who quizzed him on his knowledge of verses from the Quran. One was about the importance of conducting investigations fairly. (Mr. Shaheed is Muslim, and he told them he knew the verses, which he described as “very basic.”)

Since then, he has produced seven reports to the United Nations. In the latest, he emphasizes what he calls worsening conditions for Iranian women.

Girls as young as 9 can be married, so long as a court gives its blessings. “Nonconsensual sexual relations in marriage” are allowed under the law. A woman trying to leave an abusive marriage must prove “a significant risk of bodily harm,” while a woman seeking a divorce on the grounds of domestic violence must prove that the violence is “intolerable.”

New quotas that limit women’s higher education, he said, have sharply reduced the percentage of female students entering university. In addition, he pointed to laws that restrict the ability of unmarried women to work.

A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2014, on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Rights in Iran Worsen, U.N. Investigator Says. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe